Moving History Forward: Perspectives on the Holocaust - Schedule of Events 2013-2014

This document is an invitation from The President and Mrs. Bush for a Hanukkah Reception. The event was scheduled to be held at The White House on Monday, December 15, 2008, at six o'clock, East Entrance. The invitation requests guests to RSVP to The Social Secretary at The White House and to provide their date of birth and social security number. A contact phone number is also provided. The invitation features artwork by Bagram Ibatoulline, depicting the White House in winter with a horse-drawn cart delivering a Christmas tree. Handwritten notes on the document include 'Regrets 12/10/08' and '1/25/108'.

Sara Adler, nee Apel, was born in Radom, Poland in 1927. Her family was close-knit, religious, well-to-do and involved in community welfare. They had non-Jewish contacts through their lumber business, but Sara attended Jewish school and had primarily Jewish friends.The family fled Radom in 1939 under Ger‌man bombardment but returned and were put into the Radom Ghetto soon after. Through bribing Polish contacts, her father, her uncle and she were able to live and work in Szydlowiec (Kielce area), a munitions factory outside the ghetto. In late summer 1942, the ghetto was liquidated and the rest of her family was sent to Treblinka. Her father, her uncle and she continued working in the munitions factory until 1944. With the Russian approach in July 1944 the Germans marched the prisoners 100 miles to Tomaszow under horrible conditions and from there shipped them to Auschwitz. She describes the cattle cars, arrival, selection, unsanitary conditions and Appells. She recounts how she was helped by a fellow inmate. She was sent to work in a string factory in Lichtewerden, Czechoslovakia in the Sudetenland. She describes some of the brutality and also kindnesses of some Germans and others. After the liberation by the Russians, Sara managed to return totally destitute to Radom. Though helped by some Polish locals upon her return, other former Polish friends refused to return the family’s belongings to her. She left with some friends for Stuttgart, Germany, and got married. She emigrated to the United States in January 1949. Recorded at the 1985 American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors in Philadelphia, PA.

Rebecca sends her brother Ben an addition for his library and updates him on the health, travels, and deaths of friends and acquaintances.

This document, likely a speech or essay by Elie Wiesel, opens with a poignant, allegorical account of a violinist named Juliek in a concentration camp, depicting the spiritual resilience amidst unimaginable suffering during the Holocaust. It then transitions into Wiesel's deep reflections on the profound challenge of constructing a museum that can adequately convey the immense tragedy of the Holocaust. Wiesel emphasizes the critical importance of bearing witness and the inherent impossibility of fully communicating the event's horror through mere facts or numbers. He advocates for focusing on individual experiences and specific villages, families, and ghettos to restore a sense of personal scale to the collective memory. He describes the shrinking world of the Jewish people, from ghettos to gas chambers, and the dehumanizing process endured. Wiesel expresses his hope that visitors to such a museum would leave profoundly impacted, feeling '2,000 years old,' and that the project, born from immense pain and hate, would ultimately help overcome them. He concludes by referencing a meeting with President Carter, underscoring the collaborative effort to preserve this crucial memory.

This letter, dated March 8, 1984, is from Sylvia Frankel to Professor Elie Wiesel. Frankel expresses admiration for Wiesel's presence and her dream of taking his courses on the Talmud, T'nach, or Midrash. She thanks him for his offer to assist the Holocaust Resource Center and inquires about an upcoming conference on 'rescuers,' seeking contact information for further details. Frankel also requests information concerning an event involving Hungarian Jewry, specifically referencing the Kastner group and the special transport to Bergen-Belsen, mentioning two families she knows who were part of it, one sent to Switzerland and the other to Theresienstadt. She concludes by enclosing a program from a recent event organized to benefit the Oregon Holocaust Resource Center and extends a Purim greeting.